A Christmas Memory

in which "it took me years to get those souvenirs"

The last Christmas my mother was alive, I nearly burned down the church on Christmas Eve. It was strange, considering we typically didn’t attend the Christmas Eve candelight service, but everything was strange that year. I was 17, a senior in high school, and my brother Jay was home from winter break at Butler. Normally on Christmas Eve we’d all be in Yorktown, at my mom’s parents’ house, but Mom had just gotten out of the hospital, and we needed something to do with ourselves I suppose.

I wasn’t trying to burn down the church, of course.

Mostly I was just minding my business and sitting quietly next to Jay in the pew. But then I started feeling funny. This was right after we had all lit each other’s candles, one by one — you know, those delicate white candles with the flimsy drip protectors. My hand started to shake, and right before I nearly dropped my lit candle in the pew in front of us, Jay snagged it with his other hand, giving me a look that was equal parts “Have you lost your fucking mind” and of deep concern.

I sat down.

I didn’t burn down the church.

Of course, you might be thinking. You were overwrought with your mother nearly dying the week of Christmas.

Well, yes, I’m sure. But I also was running a fever, turns out. When we got home, Mom was in her chair, waiting for us, in her purple robe, reading Dickens — her Christmas tradition.

I brushed past her and headed straight to the bathroom.

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Now’s the point in the story that I should mention I’ve written about this before. I wrote about it in another time. (And yes, the blog post is called “In Another Time,” and it’s largely about Sade and partly about this Christmas memory and completely about missing my mother.)

I can’t believe it’s 2023 and I’m willingly linking back to a 2010 blog post I wrote that excerpted an essay I had written years before that, but here we are. I was thinking about this memory then and I’m thinking about it again now and I’ll think about it years from now if I’m lucky. I’m 17 and I’m 26 and I’m 39 and my mother is alive, she is dying, she is dead, and it is Christmastime.

Here is the memory — I’d write it differently now, probably, but when I wrote it this way, it was fresher, and I hadn’t lived a lifetime without my mother, yet.

I get to the bathroom and close the door. I lift the toilet lid and slump to the floor. I want to puke, but I can’t. All I can do is cry.

There’s a soft knock on the door a minute later. Mom walks in holding a washcloth, her oxygen cord dragging behind her. She’s in her robe, it’s Christmas Eve, and she smells like Mom. She looks like her again, too, even with the stupid oxygen dangling from her nose.

She puts the toilet lid back down and sits down, adjusting the oxygen cord around her ears, under her hair.

“Here,” she says, putting the damp washcloth to my forehead. “Everything will be fine. Just calm yourself down.”

I look at her, in her purple robe, the oxygen in her nose, the catheter tube and bandages on her chest, and lean my head on her knee. She strokes my hair.

I bury my face in her robe and breathe in her scent. Because it’s Christmas Eve, she’s in her robe, and my mother is dying.

So I breathe her in. For as long as I can.

…

I wonder what she was thinking as I sat on my bathroom floor, crying into her lap because she almost died a week before Christmas. If she was scared, she never showed it. If she felt ill (and of course, she did), she never complained. Instead, she sat there, pressed a cold cloth to my forehead, and stroked my hair until I calmed down.

She gave me comfort.

And oh, what comfort it is now, as odd as it may seem, revisiting this memory. I can almost see her. I can smell her. I feel the gentle pressure of the cool cloth against my forehead. I am mothered.

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A few weeks ago, I was at my dad’s house, which is the same house where I grew up, where this memory happened. We were in the kitchen, and he was making us eggnogs and we were talking about Christmases of the past, and this one in particular. He told me a story about what he was up to while I was nearly passing out in a pew and burning down our church.

After getting Mom safely back from the hospital, he got right back in the car and drove to the grocery store so we had everything for our “normal” Christmas. Of course he didn’t say it like that, he just recalled being at the damn grocery store late on Christmas Eve, feeling overwhelmed.

I hadn’t remembered that at all.

I had only remembered the candle, the church pew, the look my brother gave me, my mother’s purple robe, her Dickens, my fever.

As Dad handed me the nutmeg for my eggnog, I wanted to say so much. I wanted to say I never understood how much he carried for us, and I probably still don’t, not fully. I wanted to say that every Christmas I am grateful for our traditions, big and small, new and old. I wanted to say I now understand how young he was in the scheme of it all, how lucky we were to have him then, how lucky we are now.

But instead I sprinkled too much nutmeg on my nog and he laughed at me, a little.

The next day we made cookies, an old recipe and a new one. We debated if the new one would be a hit, if we’d add it to the baking traditions. It was one of my favorite days of this year.

Soon I’ll go home for Christmas, and like usual I will look for Mom’s copy of Dickens on the shelf. Over the next few days, I’ll read A Christmas Carol, and I’ll spend time with Dad — just like Christmases of the Past, the Present, and if our luck holds out, of the Future, too.

And, since my big brother saved me from starting a fire all those Christmases ago, I’ll leave you with this favorite of his, which he happened to have shared with me & our cousin Gabe earlier this eve.

“Memories, they can't be boughten”